Siddhartha *

What is perfection? What is a balance? What is the essence of "me"? As I begun forming words to express my thoughts, i felt a strange sense of history reiterating the words I was creating in the present. Siddhartha.. Of course! He is the only other person who spoke these very words to me as I would to another.

These are my words through his mouth... a privilege I don't get to use too often.

---------------------------------------

"Listen well, my dear, listen well! The sinner, which I am and which you are, is a sinner, but in times to come he will be Brahma again, he will reach the Nirvana, will be Buddha--and now see: these "times to come" are a deception, are only a parable! The sinner is not on his way to become a Buddha, he is not in the process of developing, though our capacity for thinking does not know how else to picture these things. No, within the sinner is now and today already the future Buddha, his future is already all there, you have to worship in him, in you, in everyone the Buddha which is coming into being, the possible, the hidden Buddha. The world, my friend Govinda, is not imperfect, or on a slow path towards perfection: no, it is perfect in every moment, all sin already carries the divine forgiveness in itself, all small children already have the old person in themselves, all infants already have death, all dying people the eternal life. It is nor possible for any person to see how far another one has already progressed on his path; in the robber and dice-gambler, the Buddha is waiting; in the Brahman, the robber is waiting. In deep meditation, there is the possibility to put time out of existence, to see all life which was, is, and will be as if it was simultaneous, and there everything is good, everything is perfect, everything is Brahman. Therefore, I see whatever exists as good, death is to me like life, sin like holiness, wisdom like foolishness, everything has to be as it is, everything only requires my consent, only my willingness, my loving agreement, to be good for me, to do nothing but work for my benefit, to be unable to ever harm me. I have experienced on my body and on my soul that I needed sinbvery much, I needed lust, the desire for possessions, vanity, and needed the most shameful despair, in order to learn how to give up all resistance, in order to learn how to love the world, in order to stop comparing it to some world I wished, I imagined, some kind of perfection I had made up, but to leave it as it is and to love it and to enjoy being a part of it.--These, oh Govinda, are some of the thoughts which have come into my mind."

------------------------------------------

"Bent down to me!" he whispered quietly in Govinda's ear. "Bend down to me! Like this, even closer! Very close! Kiss my forehead, Govinda!"

But while Govinda with astonishment, and yet drawn by great love and expectation, obeyed his words, bent down closely to him and touched his forehead with his lips, something miraculous happened to him. While his thoughts were still dwelling on Siddhartha's wondrous words, while he was still struggling in vain and with reluctance to think away time, to imagine Nirvana and Sansara as one, while even a certain contempt for the words of his friend was fighting in him against an immense love and veneration, this happened to him:

He no longer saw the face of his friend Siddhartha, instead he saw other faces, many, a long sequence, a flowing river of faces, of hundreds, of thousands, which all came and disappeared, and yet all seemed to be there simultaneously, which all constantly changed and renewed themselves, and which were still all Siddhartha. He saw the face of a fish, a carp, with an infinitely painfully opened mouth, the face of a dying fish, with fading eyes--he saw the face of a new-born child, red and full of wrinkles, distorted from crying--he saw the face of a murderer, he saw him plunging a knife into the body of another person--he saw, in the same second, this criminal in bondage, kneeling and his head being chopped off by the executioner with one blow of his sword--he saw the bodies of men and women, naked in positions and cramps of frenzied love--he saw corpses stretched out, motionless, cold, void-- he saw the heads of animals, of boars, of crocodiles, of elephants, of bulls, of birds--he saw gods, saw Krishna, saw Agni--he saw all of these figures and faces in a thousand relationships with one another, each one helping the other, loving it, hating it, destroying it, giving re-birth to it, each one was a will to die, a passionately painful confession of transitoriness, and yet none of then died, each one only transformed, was always re-born, received evermore a new face, without any time having passed between the one and the other face--and all of these figures and faces rested, flowed, generated themselves, floated along and merged with each other, and they were all constantly covered by something thin, without individuality of its own, but yet existing, like a thin glass or ice, like a transparent skin, a shell or mold or mask of water, and this mask was smiling, and this mask was Siddhartha's smiling face, which he, Govinda, in this very same moment touched with his lips. And, Govinda saw it like this, this smile of the mask, this smile of oneness above the flowing forms, this smile of simultaneousness above the thousand births and deaths, this smile of Siddhartha was precisely the same, was precisely of the same kind as the quiet, delicate, impenetrable, perhaps benevolent, perhaps mocking, wise, thousand-fold smile of Gotama, the Buddha, as he had seen it himself with great respect a hundred times. Like this, Govinda knew, the perfected ones are smiling.

Not knowing any more whether time existed, whether the vision had lasted a second or a hundred years, not knowing any more whether there existed a Siddhartha, a Gotama, a me and a you, feeling in his innermost self as if he had been wounded by a divine arrow, the injury of which tasted sweet, being enchanted and dissolved in his innermost self, Govinda still stood for little while bent over Siddhartha's quiet face, which he had just kissed, which had just been the scene of all manifestations, all transformations, all existence. The face was unchanged, after under its surface the depth of the thousandfoldness had closed up again, he smiled silently, smiled quietly and softly, perhaps very benevolently, perhaps very mockingly, precisely as he used to smile, the exalted one.

Deeply, Govinda bowed; tears, he knew nothing of, ran down his old face; like a fire burnt the feeling of the most intimate love, the humblest veneration in his heart. Deeply, he bowed, touching the ground, before him who was sitting motionlessly, whose smile reminded him of everything he had ever loved in his life, what had ever been valuable and holy to him in his life."

---------------------------------------

* Hesse, Hermann, Siddhartha, 1992

My direction

There are moments in life when you see a vision so clearly that it pierces through your being. I saw it today, too clearly to be a passing fantasy. I saw evil again, human evil, coldness to life and everything associated with it.

I saw visions of gunfire, blood, screams and tears as i felt my own soaking my palms. Men, women and children being killed. Cameramen, soldiers and civilians being massacred.

This is the essence of humanity. This is my world. This is where I belong.... On the front lines of hell.

Peace at gunpoint

I've been asked several times... What drives people to killing an innocent human in cold blood? The question to ask is... What does this man FEEL while killing another? Does he feel anything at all? What should be done when such a man has an innocent man, woman or child at gunpoint? Negotiate?

This is the primary function of the UN peacekeeping forces, keeping peace at gunpoint. Using the gun when there is no other way. But, if we think about putting an essentially supra-national humanitarian peacekeeping force that steps in to stop all forms of violence inflicted on innocent people, we cannot possibly think of putting this force under the control of an organization that derives its legitimacy from its member states. These member states have a complex mesh of national political interests at stake that prevents them from taking purely global humanitarian decisions.

So what is the ideal solution?

Creating an armed peacekeeping group not controlled by any nation but by a single truly supra-national organization. What will be required for legitimate intervention is endorsement by nations, especially the government of the nation that is a becoming a victim to mindless violence. Now, what if the government in question is either the cause of the problem or defunct? What becomes necessary in this case is circumventing the system.

Though unfortunate, the reality is this... To be effective in humanitarian intervention, states must be circumvented. The condition of sovereignty stands valid only if the state is effectively responding to violence being inflicted upon it's innocent citizens. So, logically speaking, circumvention is justified. Realistically speaking, such an organization would quickly become illegal... some might even label it as a terrorist group forcing it to go underground.

So this peacekeeping group will need funds. Where will that come from? Governments are out. Private sources are the only solution apart from self-sustaining projects. It will definitely require a huge fund base to fight maniacs with guns and politicians with words.

Shudders

I shuddered with anger today. The kind of anger that brings me tears. The kind of anger that stems from my respect for humans... for mankind.

I felt this while flipping through a collection of some war photography covering inhuman acts of war through Afghanistan, Iran, Vietnam and other nations ravaged by human evil. Calling man an animal for this behaviour would not do justice to any animal. Animals kill to survive. Man begins to feel sadistic pleasure while inflicting pain and death around him. Animals aren't capable of cruelty. Only man can feel pure cruelty.

Mangled, bloody bodies grovelling in the dust and debris of the world fallen around them devastated by grenades and bullets. Faces of humans contorted with wrath, weilding guns and batons, looming over another human who is cowering for his life... his very existence. I saw evil in those eyes.

The brilliance of mankind overpowered by evil! A man staring coldly at another man squinting in helpless anguish with a revolver stabbed against his temple seconds before his death. Right wing activists slamming a chair against the head of a dead leftist already hanged with his body already broken. People surrounding this scene some staring coldly, some in awe and some smiling. I won't describe the smile.

WHY?!

Taking pleasure in another man's suffering. What could instigate such a feeling in man? Why?

Making human life the equivalent of a twig that can be broken at the whim of a fanatic. Why? Don't they see the potential and value of human lives? Don't they love themselves? Don't they feel?

Politics! It's horrendous just to imagine the honchos doing the high-level diplomatic talk while nations destroy each other. Not addressing the loss of lives but the protection of some amorphous concept of 'society'! Are those people who are killing themselves and killing others not part of this damn society of theirs!

What is the solution? To destroy the people who are already dead... I wonder if there is an alternative... Until then I will believe in and do what is most necessary when it is most necessary.